|
But even there we are not to remain always, in that beauty of
the multiple; we must make haste yet higher, above this heaven of
ours and even that; leaving all else aside we ask in awe "Who
produced that realm and how?" Everything There is a single Idea
in an individual impression and, informed by The Good, possesses
the universal good transcendent over all. Each possessing that
Being above, possesses also the total Living-Form in virtue of
that transcendent life, possesses, no doubt, much else as well.
But what is the Nature of this Transcendent in view of which and
by way of which the Ideas are good?
The best way of putting the question is to ask whether, when
Intellectual-Principle looked towards The Good, it had
Intellection of that unity as a multiplicity and, itself a unity,
plied its Act by breaking into parts what it was too feeble to
know as a whole.
No: that would not be Intellection looking upon the Good; it
would be a looking void of Intellection. We must think of it not
as looking but as living; dependent upon That, it kept itself
turned Thither; all the tendance taking place There and upon That
must be a movement teeming with life and must so fill the looking
Principle; there is no longer bare Act, there is a filling to
saturation. Forthwith Intellectual-Principle becomes all things,
knows that fact in virtue of its self-knowing and at once becomes
Intellectual-Principle, filled so as to hold within itself that
object of its vision, seeing all by the light from the Giver and
bearing that Giver with it.
In this way the Supreme may be understood to be the cause at once
of essential reality and of the knowing of reality. The sun,
cause of the existence of sense-things and of their being seen,
is indirectly the cause of sight, without being either the
faculty or the object: similarly this Principle, The Good, cause
of Being and Intellectual-Principle, is a light appropriate to
what is to be seen There and to their seer; neither the Beings
nor the Intellectual-Principle, it is their source and by the
light it sheds upon both makes them objects of Intellection. This
filling procures the existence; after the filling, the being; the
existence achieved, the seeing followed: the beginning is that
state of not yet having been filled, though there is, also, the
beginning which means that the Filling Principle was outside and
by that act of filling gave shape to the filled.
|
|